


In The Script

by myherofics



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Emotional, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, First Love, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Main character - Freeform, Romance, Slow Burn, Teasing, Tragic Romance, Young Love, reader - Freeform, slowburn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28902198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myherofics/pseuds/myherofics
Summary: Grey Matthews, the main character in a coming of age book, hates his reader Sage Davis. He finds that she gets off track a lot, forgets to read his book, has a horrendous laugh, and is probably having a midlife crisis at age nineteen. The only issue is, his reader is quite fond of Grey and thinks of him as boyfriend in her months surrounded by chaos. Even worse whenever Sage dreams about him, Grey Matthews finds himself in her dreams with her. And with Sage being all alone she vows to never stop reading his book, and while at first resenting that, Grey finds that maybe being loved isn’t so bad after all.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Reader, book character/female reader





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> There is discussion of suicide, eating disorders, and overall unhealthy habits in this story. If you find any of these topics triggering or make you uncomfortable please don’t read. :)

Grey Matthews first noticed the problem when people began to enter his store wearing cloths that varied in all different colors and sizes over peoples faces. Normally he could catch a few people wearing hats, something a boy rather close to him shared in common with them. But the face coverings were something entirely new, he noticed a few acquaintances open their eyes wider, to get better glimpses, Grey though was far too uninterested in glaring at the cloth wearers and simply observed others and minded his own business. 

The new problem surfaced itself around a week to a month later, and paired with the cloth coverings, but people stopped visiting him and his shop. Soon it would be a good week if only three people emerged through his store doors. None came to visit him though, and that was the issue that really scared Grey. He wasn't dumb, he had seen others thrown away or hidden in the back of the store so no one could reach them. It was a silent rule of survival of the fittest, you got picked and got to know your story, or you disappeared. That's when another issue came up. Peers much like Grey, but differentiating slightly began to disappear, and on the day that would be Grey's last, it seemed that one of the sweet store workers who now wore a green cloth covering was in a hurry. Her dark eyes were welled with tears and her face was constricted in an emotion Grey couldn't quite place. But whatever it happened to be that day, she shoveled the remaining eight of his peers into her arms and bolted for the back of the room. And Grey had slipped out, and with a soft thud collapsed on the floor. The next thing happened either by a twist of fate or mere luck but someone else came racing in, he could tell by the quick and eager footsteps. It was a feminine voice he heard but the words were jumbled and Grey couldn't even look up because he was faced down with all the brown fibers from the carpet tickling his nose. All he did know, was he heard wandering footsteps that paused next to him. His mind quarreled with what was going to happen next. Would he get stepped on, stomped on? Would he get passed? His chance of freedom gone? And with a quick swipe he found himself being whisked up in something that was also odd. The hands were covered in a type of glove, but thinner than regular cotton ones he saw people wearing in the colder days. These gloves were thin and elastic against his chest. Soon though, the thin hand coverings abandoned him and he was dropped into a covering and only caught glimpses of his book store through the rips in a paper bag. 

*****

"Yes Mom I'm home, don't worry I wore gloves and put on hand sanitizer. Fine I'll go wash my hands but I really don't understand your fear with me, it's not like I am going to parties, it was just a bookstore that should have been closed," she gasped cutting off the conversation, "I'm fine, I just burnt myself putting ramen in the water, Mom I swear I am okay, I love you, stay safe!" She called to the phone and a small beep escaped. Grey was quite puzzled by this girl, he had never experienced an outside life before, he got to live the pages of his story and get read. You see if you haven't quite caught on by now, Grey Matthews is the main character of the book, Forever Lost In Sunset. His book was placed cover-side up on a stained gray table in a small room, and from the cover he watched this girl burn her fingers on boiling water. Grey didn't pay much attention to her though, plus at this angle there was hardly even a good sight of her. There was though, a good angle of the room. 

He recalled walking up a set of long stairs and seeing the girl take out a silver key from a chain with a few more odds and ends on it. Then a maroon shade door in a long hallway with other sets of doors was opened up and closed behind him. Looking around Grey could see he was now being held as the girl walked into a kitchen like space, there was another white door on the side of a hallway a few steps in, that Grey soon found out led into a smaller room with three white walls and one light green colored one surrounding a large bed. Beside the bed was a short tan table that was coated with plants and a small light. As a matter of fact, the entire room was coated with green plants either hanging from the ceiling, perched on a window sill, or in the case for a leafy looking tree, potted in a corner where it flourished without too much light. He noticed piles of books lining three shelves in the room, built into the wall, seeming the only thing that didn't hold the leafy plants. There were two more doors attached to the room but they both lay unexplored for Grey and his book traveled into a main area where he saw the rest of the home. There was a stained gray table on one side of the room, having to have wired chairs with brown cushions on them under one side of it. A small sink, dishwasher, fridge, and oven all were across from the table Grey sat on. Along with cabinets all around either if not lined with food, were filled with plates and cups. And finally on the other side of the large open room was a television resting on a poorly painted green cabinet, and a rug covering the floor with a large couch on it and small little tables scattered across the room covered in plants. None were hanging though, which Grey found peculiar figuring all of them in her room were, but on a small balcony outside, that he could only see through softly moving grey blackout curtains, were about one hundred leafy plants scattered on the balcony. Oddly enough none of the plants had flowers on them, Grey was most accustomed to seeing plants with flowers on them, they in fact surrounded a small field of grass on his cover. In the distance as the sunset behind a rocky old bridge, sat Grey's character leaning against the rickety old thing as sun disappeared into the petal and flower filled grassy terrain behind him. And collapsed in a small boat sat his dear friend, who he wasn't quite sure of the name yet, as the book was yet to be opened. Whomever he was lay in the boat not moving with his neck over one side and his legs over the other, with the black hat he wore practically touching the water. Forever Lost In Sunset, the cover had etched on it in a dark drippy black ink.


	2. Chapter Two

Over the course of a week Grey Matthews was able to learn thousands of things, first off and possibly most important on the list, he was the main character in his story, with shaggy black hair that stuck upright, (which was something he could secretly never handle with its getting in his eyes, but he was written that way) and green eyes that it fell into. His skin was tan, and it was no surprise because the entire novel took place in a small town on the Jersey Shore, over the summer, and from what he gathered through the pages he was dancing through so far, his former best friend- who turned out to in fact have the name of Alex Walker got bullied throughout the school year by other kids, and was killed when they pushed him off a bridge. The same one Grey found himself sitting on in the cover image. And instead of staying home that summer Grey decides to spend the summer where his best friend was. The whole plot overall was darker than Grey had first gathered, at only page fifty three, his character was practically battling depression, he hoped that at some point in the story he got to see a therapist, because damn, the Grey in the story really needed it.

It was rather odd, though they were the same person, internally Grey felt different than this character was feeling going through the novel. It could be hard for someone to wrap their head around, since he physically was the person in the novel. He moved on the same steps and obeyed all the actions written in the words that he acted out, but his mind had a completely different set than the Grey Matthews in the text. Maybe he had some multiple personality disorder. Whatever the facts was, Grey hoped that the annoying Sage Davis could hurry up and finish the book. And that leads us to uncover another thing Grey learned, his reader was a nineteen year old college girl named Sage Davis. He found it quite ironic how she loved plants so much and her name referred to a plant. It was also a color, like his name, Grey. For all intensive purposes even though their realities they lived in were different, their ages were close, he in the novel was twenty and still in college like Sage. But so far he gathered that he had gone to college during the school year in person, walking around the campus. But Sage logged on to her school to listen to long lectures on medicine every day. Just sitting in her bed, eating either ramen or oatmeal. Grey felt crude thinking that she should have something much healthier as his character in the book cried at Alex's funeral. Oops, he probably shouldn't be thinking stuff like that while he was in such an intense scene but oh well. Quickly he shook himself of that thought, this girl seemed to be perfectly able to sustain herself with the crappy brown sugar oatmeal she ate for breakfast and lunch, and the pot of ramen she either cooked or warmed up from pervious nights for dinner, being so that she stayed up till her phone shined three o'clock in the morning and she finally logged off of her computer. 

Maybe that was why that the infuriating Sage couldn't finish his novel, because she was too wrapped up in her crappy meals and crappy collage work. Or it could have been because of something else he learned when she left his book open on her couch as the news played in the background. It was early in their new year, the months just barely scratching the beginnings of March, but there was talk of an illness called Covid-19, basically a big influenza type deal, which was why her college was online Grey soon found out. And why back at this book store people wore funny cloth coverings, now known as masks, to protect them from other people's germs. Along with wearing latex gloves and dumping germ killing sanitizers onto their hands. The Real Grey (why not call him that?) found germs to now practically terrify him and he would be damned if Sage ever handed his book over to anyone else's bare hands. While the Character Grey (who Real Grey happened to share a body and story with) seemed to not care at all about germs as proven on page thirty seven, when he tried a cigarette passed around by twelve other people, before choking on the smoke burning his throat and chest. All those other mouths inhaling the same rolled up piece of garbage, disgusting, he probably could get Hepatitis from all those mouths, okay that's a lie, Grey didn't even have a clue in hell what Hepatitis was, it just popped up as bright commercials on the news. 

Most interesting, or perhaps most aggravating, Grey wasn't quite sure which one yet, was another thing he learned. That being, he wasn't just alive in his novel. The brat had actually made him alive, but it was only in her imagination, rather odd. This meant that whenever Sage closed the novel and thought of him elsewhere, his body would pop into her head, and oddly enough he had full control over it. It wasn't like in the story where he was physically blinded to do whatever the script said, his body mirroring the actions on the page. He was actually real, in her head, the Real Grey, his own mind and body. Well there were for sure a few changes, his hair was longer in her head, and messier, and every so often Sage would come up to him and hand him a hair tie. He was never quite sure what that meant, but of the eight times she imagined him and he popped into her head, five of them she gave him the hair tie. Along with the whole longer and messier hair thing, his eyes were also a lot greener, strikingly emerald and glistened in the dark. Along with that, he was taller, he was pretty tall and skinny in the book. Basically just a lanky messy guy in his twenties but wasn't even legally allowed to drink. But in her mind, he was tall and had some muscle on his body, and also had a sneaking suspicion he had abs or a six pack underneath his clothes. 

When Grey rendezvous with Sage in her own mind, Sage herself in her body was with him too. That was pretty funny to Grey, there was Sage, the girl reading the book, and the same Sage popped into her head, the same size shape and mind as Grey so they could interact. But it wasn't like they ever really interacted all that long, a few minutes max and all of the times she would never even talk, but only give him hair tie offerings. An odd girl Sage was, why couldn't she just finish his book?


	3. Chapter Three

Sage, though seemingly studying for Med-School, from what Grey gathered from the long lectures she joined on her computer, was very stupid. Or incompetent, or maybe, he decided, maybe she just couldn't read, or not for long periods of times. She hadn't even laid a finger on his precious book in more than a week and Grey was practically aching for her to be able to read past page fifty three. Yet still she seemed like a devoted student so maybe she wasn't as incompetent as he had thought, which is why he found it quite odd that Sage didn't wake up at her typical eight fifteen in the morning. It was past ten when he actually began to worry, his book was sprawled out on her bedroom floor along with notebooks, coffee cups, and dirty clothes (the sheer disrespect she had for his book was something Grey would get to later), making it rather hard to get a good view to see if Sage was actually breathing or not on her bed. Of course it was his luck that the first person to read his book would die before finishing it. Or even getting to chapter seven. 

Grey found himself slowly filling with more concern as the minutes ticked by, feeling like hours to Grey, it wasn't entirely like he cared for her, he really just cared for his book overall to be read. By eleven fifteen Grey had tried a series of things to actually see if Sage was alive, all proving themselves rather useless because after all he was literally a character in a book, trapped in pages and binding, at most he was a figment of her imagination. Grey messed around in his own thoughts for minutes more, until by the clock on the wall had the little finger lay at twelve and the bigger one point at seven, and that was when Sage made a sign of life. She groaned and covered her hands over her eyes, then pushed herself up so Grey was able to see the mess he was staring at, her hair could be easily compared to the main of a lion, her brown eyes looked smaller as they squinted slightly, and her grey tank top was a mess, practically revealing her whole chest. Grey wished she could just cover herself up, but soon after was surprised by this thought. Sage was simply in her own apartment alone, it really shouldn't matter how a mess she looked when she woke up. And he for sure didn't understand a sickly feeling in his stomach and his rash disgust and need for her to cover up. God this girl was annoying him. 

*****

So as it turns out, Grey loved days that started with him thinking his reader was dead. She ended up sleeping in so late because today was her day off, he soon gathered while she made her lunch and proclaimed to her plants that she loved days off, as she dumped an avocado and spices onto a burnt piece of bread. Maybe her diet wasn't strictly oatmeal and ramen after all. After that she straightened up all the coffee cups that were scattered in plastic and mugs around her living room and dining area, then moved onto the cups filled with tea that also were scattered around the house. It was quite mesmerizing Grey found to watch, but perhaps he was just being nice to her because she had brought his book off thats disgusting floor and placed it on the gray table as she began to clean up. Grey then decided he learned a few more things that day. He had never quite payed attention to Sage as a person, like physically. 

She had big brown eyes and probably needed glasses or at least her eyes needed a rest from looking at her computer all day long, because she was often squinting. Her hair was curly, but not without a frizzy under layer, and so today she popped it up in some sort of messy knot with a hair tie on her wrist, something she would've offered to him in a dream. She seemed averagely tall, but still had to get on the tips of her toes to grab a lighter she had on the top of her fridge. Once her living area and open space actually looked clean and hospitable, she moved onto lighting a stick that stood up in a small tray with the lighter. Grey had no clue what this was, and why the smoke coming off of it was so close to his book, he was flammable and hoped Sage knew that. Sage then stretched and walked into her room, Grey wasn't quite able to tell what she was doing in there at first, but when she emerged, she had changed out of her tank top and sleep pants with snowmen on them into grey sweatpants she rolled at the bottom, and black turtleneck under a charcoal colored shirt that said Arctic Monkeys with squiggles under the words. It was hard to make out what the squiggles even were because she was holding a overflowing basket that Grey recognized as all of the dirty clothes laying on or around her floor and closet in the bedroom. She walked off past the kitchen and opened to white closet doors and threw her clothes into a machine in there, turned it on, and then sighed walking back out. 

For a girl who's home ninety percent of the time was messy expect for this first time Grey had seen her actually put effort into her home, she cared an awful lot about making sure her plants were okay. She scurried around with a big cup of water in one hand and a spray bottle full of water in the other around the house. She sprayed or watered every single plant, some more than others, some less. The whole affair took a surprisingly long time, she moved with care from the balcony to the kitchen and then to the hanging plants all scattered in her room. And then finally, she suppressed a smile, and opened up his book.


End file.
